Currently, sensors deployed in a network can be used to gather network traffic data related to nodes operating in the network. The network traffic data can include metadata relating to a packet, a collection of packets, a flow, a bidirectional flow, a group of flows, a session, or a network communication of another granularity. That is, the network traffic data can generally include any information describing communication on all layers of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. For example, the network traffic data can include source/destination MAC address, source/destination IP address, protocol, port number, etc. In some embodiments, the network traffic data can also include summaries of network activity or other network statistics such as number of packets, number of bytes, number of flows, bandwidth usage, response time, latency, packet loss, jitter, and other network statistics.
Gathered network traffic data can be analyzed to provide insights into the operation of the nodes in the network, otherwise referred to as analytics. In particular, discovered application or inventories, application dependencies, policies, efficiencies, resource and bandwidth usage, and network flows can be determined for the network using the network traffic data.
Sensors deployed in a network can be used to gather network traffic data on a client and server level of granularity. For example, network traffic data can be gathered for determining which clients are communicating which servers and vice versa. However, sensors are not currently deployed or integrated with systems to gather network traffic data for different segments of traffic flows forming the traffic flows between a server and a client. Specifically, current sensors gather network traffic data as traffic flows directly between a client and a server while ignoring which nodes, e.g. middleboxes, the traffic flows actually pass through in passing between a server and a client. This effectively treats the network environment between servers and clients as a black box and leads to gaps in network traffic data and traffic flows indicated by the network traffic data.
In turn, such gaps in network traffic data and corresponding traffic flows can lead to deficiencies in diagnosing problems within a network environment. For example, a problem stemming from an incorrectly configured middlebox might be diagnosed as occurring at a client as the flow between the client and a server is treated as a black box. In another example, gaps in network traffic data between a server and a client can lead to an inability to determine whether policies are correctly enforced at a middlebox between the server and the client. There therefore exist needs for systems, methods, and computer-readable media for generating network traffic data at nodes between servers and clients, e.g. at middleboxes between the servers and clients. In particular, there exist needs for systems, methods, and computer-readable media for stitching together traffic flows at nodes between servers and clients to generate a more complete and detailed traffic flow, e.g. between the servers and the clients.